


Notice Board

by Skyler10



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Love at First Sight, artist rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6849604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyler10/pseuds/Skyler10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his sister finds a lost mp3 player, a physics professor falls head over heels for his neighbor, an art teacher with impeccable taste in music and a smile that lights up the universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notice Board

**Author's Note:**

> For the TimePetalsPrompt “lost and found.” Thought I would try something different this week! I’ve never written an AU like this, so… hope it works. haha

Rose Tyler hadn’t yet lived in the building two weeks when she spotted a note on the hallway notice board directed at her. She was on her way to a night class at the local community college where she taught painting and sketching, so she didn’t have much time. But something about the post made her stop anyway. And it’s a good thing she did.

**Notice: to the person playing the loud music last night**

Please turn it up, that was my favorite band. ;)

 

Interesting. The person it was addressed to had to be to her. She had felt a little guilty at the time but knew her closest neighbors were gone for the week and figured anybody else would knock on the wall if they were bothered. She tried to remember the bands she’d had on as she painted. Her music always helped her get in the zone for her work and the louder the better.

She shook her head tried to move on with her day, but soon realized it was going to drive her nuts. What songs had she even been listening to? She got out her mp3 player just as the doors of the crowded lift opened. An acquaintance – just in time, Rose remembered her name was Donna – from a few floors up greeted her with the usual exuberance Rose had come to expect every Thursday night, as if they didn’t see each other every week coming or going. A while back they had met at a bar, realized they lived in the same building, and Rose hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise since.

Never mind on the playlist, she sighed, stuffing the mp3 player back into the open pocket on her art supply bag. Small talk with Donna it was.

 

* * *

 

 

The Doctor, as his students and colleagues called him, was running late for his morning faculty meeting after a late night. He loved his drives out of the city to help his grandfather with his telescope. Donna called it “manly bonding,” but he didn’t mind her teasing. Still. Lucky thing he didn’t need much sleep. This morning, it was up to him to defend the funding of the new observatory and planetarium. What good was an astronomy program without that? If he was supposed to encourage students to aspire to the government’s new space program, what good was all that physics instruction without vision? Without ambition? Without desire?

At that, he realized he was staring at a beautifully designed notice that hung on the community corkboard.

**Notice: lost mp3 player**

Please, please help me find it! It can’t be worth much,

but it means the world to me. Last seen near or on the lift.

Also, to the previous post-er, I’m glad you liked my music!

 

The Doctor smiled despite his exhaustion. Oh, this was his lucky day.

Not only did he have an answer for his sister on who the mp3 player she found belonged to, he was also going to meet the pretty blonde from across the hall. The pretty blonde from across the hall who had good taste in music. The pretty blonde from across the hall who had lived here two weeks and had yet to be overheard with a male companion.

Not that he was listening in, of course. Just that he had, well, noticed.

Speaking of notices, it was his turn to write!

* * *

 

**Notice: FOUND mp3 player!**

To the person who posted about their lost mp3 player, I found it.

Well, technically, my sister did.

Still, I have your most precious possession.

However, I’m not giving it back without the chance to buy you dinner.

Knock on the door you hear your playlist coming from and I’ll take you out.

 

This notice told Rose much more than that her music player had been found. Oh, yes. This bloke (she doubted a woman would have written something so cheeky) surely knew more about her than that she lived on the same hallway.

The intuition was heightened by the look Donna was giving her this evening as they rode the lift together.

“Ok, I give in. What do you know?” Rose wasn’t usually this impolite to mere acquaintances, but needs must.

“I think my brother has a crush on you.”

“On me? Have I even _met_ your brother? How? Wha?”

The lift dinged and the doors opened on the ground floor.

“You’ll see.” Donna smirked and bounced off to the bus stop.

* * *

 

The Doctor waited until he heard her keychain jingle. It wasn’t that he had the exact jingle of her keys memorized already so much as he knew it couldn’t be anyone else on the hall. Plus she always came home on Fridays about this time. Half an hour after he got home from the university.

He hit play on the mp3 player, trusting that even though it might take her a while to come, she would hear her music, recognize it, and knock on his door.

It was the patience to wait for that moment that was the issue.

He bounced his leg as he graded papers, distraction clearly failing. Surely, she would come… right? Did he have it on loud enough? Oh gods, was his post too creepy? Perhaps that was it. Why would she trust a stranger like that? He wouldn’t blame her if she avoided him forever now.

Twenty minutes into this panic, she knocked. Papers fluttered to the floor at his flustered attempt to clean up. Taking a deep breath, he stacked them and collected himself.

He reached for the door handle, but stopped to sort his hair out first. He had been running his fingers through it as a nervous habit and goodness knows what it looked like now. This would have to do. No time to worry about it now. Most charming smile in place, he opened the door to reveal her, the mysterious blonde neighbor, a woman whose name he didn’t even know but who was making his heart race in anticipation.

She shrugged her shoulders under a red flowy top and shuffled Converse-clad feet.

“Um, hi. I was wondering if you were the one? I mean, from the notice board,” she rushed to clarify. A blush crept onto her cheeks, making her even more beautiful.

“Hmm?” He lost himself in her whiskey-brown eyes. _Out of your league, Doctor. Give it up,_ he chided himself.

“With my mp3 player?” She pointed inside to the source of the music.

“Oh! Oh, yes. C’mon in then.” He held open the door as she walked in, feeling like a chivalrous knight and a lovelorn schoolboy all at once.

He handed her the device, playlist still going.

“Thanks,” was all she said, but she was biting her lip, as if she was going to say more but was holding back. He decided to take a risk and make the connection for her.

“Did my sister happen to mention me? She found this on the lift coming back from her kickboxing class on Thursday night.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah, Donna, ginger, loud? From the way she was texting me earlier, I thought she might have said something to you… Maybe not. She’s hard to forget if you had met.”

“Oh! Donna that lives upstairs? Donna’s your sister?” He watched her face light up with understanding and couldn’t help but fall a little bit more in love with this nameless stranger. Well, he couldn’t stop his attraction, but there was one part of that problem he could remedy.

“Yep! I’m John Noble, well, Jonathan, but everyone just calls me the Doctor.”

“The Doctor? Okay. And are you?”

“Am I what?” He blinked, afraid he’d missed something those lips had said as he was daydreaming about them.

“A doctor.” She giggled and took the opportunity to tease him, “You know, do you treat patients and stuff? Or just like the title.”

“No! Yes! Not a physician. A physics professor at the university. Time and space and planets and such.”

“Wow, look at you. A real rocket scientist.”

He couldn’t tell how much of her smirk was from being genuinely impressed and how much was secretly making fun of him. Like she had some sort of inside joke he wasn’t privy to. A longing sparked within him to know all her inside jokes.

“Yeah, that’s me.” He ran a hand through his hair, hoping it made him look cool and not like the nutty physics nerd he was.  

She smiled at him for a moment. It was obvious she was reading him, but not what she was concluding.

“Rose,” she said simply.

“What?”

“That’s my name. I’m Rose Tyler.”

“Rooose Tylerrr,” he rolled the name on his tongue, tasting it like fine wine.

“I’m an artist. Well, an art teacher. At the community college. Would love to be at the university, but you know how it is, work your way up, pay your dues and all.”

“’Course, yeah. Art, wow, that’s lovely,” he babbled, unsure of what he was saying anymore. He had her name. And her profession. And she wasn’t edging away or anxious to leave.

“So…” She ran her tongue across her bottom lip, and he swallowed hard.

“Rose-Tyler-would-you-like-to-go-to-dinner-with-me?” he rushed out. Maybe if he said it fast enough she wouldn’t disappear before he had the opportunity to ask.

“Sorry?”

He inhaled and tried again. “Would you, Rose Tyler, care to go out with me? To dinner! To go out to dinner with me!”

Rose beamed at his slip-up, and again he wondered if she was laughing at him or with him.

“I’d love to. Where we going?”

“Oh. Oh! I, um, I hadn’t got that far. Hadn’t expected you to say yes, honestly.”

“But you do want to? Not just, I don’t know, being polite or something?” That world-stopping smile slipped from her face and he scrambled to put it back where it belonged.

“No! Yes! I mean, blimey, not that again. I do! I very, very much want to go out with you. To dinner.” He finished with a helpless sigh.  “I just didn’t think you would. Want to. With me.”

“Well, in that case, I know a fantastic chippy near the river.”

“A chippy?” His brow furrowed, trying to work out what this implied about her opinion of him. Surely she knew he meant somewhere… more date-like?

“Trust me, best chips in the universe.”

“In the _universe_ , huh?”

“Oh yes,” she laughed. There it was again. He would spend all evening, and every evening she allowed it, trying to make her laugh just to hear the enchanting sound. Making her happy suddenly became the most important thing in his world and he barely knew her.

Perhaps it would have eased his nerves that night if he had a time machine of some sort, one that could have told him that by the end of the night, she would slip her hand into his as they walked home. That they would see so much of each other having two separate flats no longer made sense, and she would join him and Donna on their visits to Grandpa Wilf’s outside the city. That one night, far in the future, while Rose and Donna talked like sisters, he would show his grandfather the newly purchased diamond and ask for advice he would remember for the rest of his life. And not long after, he would bring her to the university’s planetarium, long after everyone else had gone home, so he could propose under the stars.


End file.
